The history of silk, cotton, linen, wool, and other fibrous ... - Cd3wd.com

12 CULTIVATION AND MANUFACTURE OF
The transition from vegetable fibre to the use of animal
staples, such as wool and hair, could not have been very dif-
ficult ; indeed, as already stated, it took place at a period of
which we possess no very authentic written record.
The instrument used for spinning in all countries, from the
earliest times, was the distaff and spindle. This simple ap-
paratus was put by the Greek mythologists into the hands of
Minerva and the Parcse ; Solomon employs upon it the industry
of the virtuous woman ; to the present day the distaff is
used in India, Egypt, and other eastern countries.
The ancient spindle or distaff was a very simple instru-
ment. The late Lady Calcott informs us, that it continued
even to our own days to be used by the Hindoos in all its
primitive simplicity. " I have seen," she says, " the rock or
distaff formed simply of the leading shoot of some yovmg
tree, carefully peeled, it might be birch or elder, and, further
north, of fir or pine ; and the spindle formed of the beautiful
shrub Euonymus, or spindle-tree."*
Spinning among the Egyptians, as among our ancestors
of no very distant age, was a domestic occupation in which
ladies of rank did not hesitate to engage. The term " spin-
ster "is yet applied to unmarried ladies of every rank, and
there are persons yet alive who remember to have seen the
spinning wheel an ordinary piece of furniture in domestic
economy.
We are told that " Solomon had horses brought out of Egypt
* The superior fineness of some Indian muslins, and their quality of retaining,
longer than European fabrics, an appearance of excellence, has occasioned a be-
lief that the cotton wool of which they are woven is superior to any known else-
where ; this, however, is so far from being the fact, that no cotton is to be found
in India which at all equals in quality the better kinds produced in the United
States of America. The excellence of India muslins must be wholly ascribed to
the skilfulness and patience of the workmen, as shown in the different processes
of spinning and weaving. (See Plate v.) Their yarn is spun upon the distaff,
and it is owing to the dexterous use of the finger and thumb in forming the
thread, and to the moisture wliich it thus imbibes, that its fibres are more per-
fectly incorporated than they can be through the employment of any mechanical
substitutes.